Monday, July 10, 2017

Lost causes

By nature, I am an optimist. For example, I sometimes characterize the
role of the clergy as that of a professional hoper.

However, being an optimist and a professional hoper does not mean never
recognizing that the issue is settled and the cause is lost. Recent news reports
highlight two lost causes with respect to which some people continue to have an
ill-founded hope.

In the first instance, continuing to hope may feel easier and more
moral than recognizing the cause is lost and being overwhelmed with grief. This
first instance is the tragic case of a baby, Charles Gard, who for eleven
months has subsisted on life support in a London hospital. He was born without the
ability to breathe or eat. Without life support systems, he would quickly die.

Charlie’s parents, the Pope, and President Trump don’t want to end his
life and suffering by terminating the life support because they want to try an
untested new treatment that may help Charlie. Roman Catholic doctrine, the
hospital, and the British courts all support withdrawing life support because
there is no hope for a cure.

Grief is hard. Yet tragedy and death are unavoidable aspects of life.
Frittering away scarce resources on cases in which there is no hope, thereby protracting
suffering for all involved, is neither moral nor Christian. Surely there are
babies who suffer from the same condition as Charlie Gard but in less severe
ways and in closer proximity to the doctors who have devised the experimental
treatment who would be better suited for testing the treatment.

In the second instance, North Korea has both nuclear weapons and
intercontinental missiles (ICBMs) capable of reaching the US (Alaska and
perhaps Hawaii) on which to launch those weapons.

While the world would indisputably be safer if North Korea had neither
nuclear weapons or ICBMs, there is no way to force North Korea to give up one
or both. Military experts agree that North Korea has too many possible targets
for a first strike by the US to succeed in destroying all North Korean nukes. A
first strike that did not eliminate all nuclear weapons would almost certainly
result in North Korea launching its own nuclear strike against the US, South
Korea, or Japan. The death toll from these strikes and the inevitable war that
would follow is too high to contemplate.

Similarly, scholars – experts in politics, foreign affairs, economics,
and North Korea – agree that no set of sanctions will coerce North Korea to
surrender its nuclear weapons or ICBMs. North Korea rightly perceives its
nuclear weapons and ICBMs as insurance against invasion and forced regime
change.

As a child, I lived with the constant threat of a Soviet nuclear strike
against the US. Those old enough to remember will recall Soviet threats and
bluster as well as civil defense drills, e.g., school children seeking safety
under their desks. Living now in Hawaii, perhaps within range of a North Korean
nuclear attack, I feel no less safe than I did as a child.

The policy of mutual assured destruction has prevented a nuclear war
not only between the US and the Soviet Union, its successor state of Russia,
and China, but also between Pakistan and India. I do not believe that North
Korea has a death wish. However great an injury they might be able to inflict
on the US, the result would be the near, if not complete, annihilation of North
Korea. A policy of mutual assured destruction will continue to prevent nuclear
wars.

Instead of pursuing hopeless policies, the US and other nations would
do well to engage North Korea in constructive ways, such as those advocated by South
Korea’s current president. No matter how slim the odds of that engagement
succeeding in improving global stability and moving North Korea toward better
governance, those odds are infinitely greater than pursuing a policy that has
no hope of success.

As with individuals, God never desires that we pursue the hopeless.
Instead, genuine hope entails seeking the possible that advances us and our neighbors
along the trajectory that leads to more abundant life, greater peace and
justice for all creation.

3 comments:

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.